A very happy personage in the year of grace 1482, was the noblegentleman Robert d'Estouteville, chevalier, Sieur de Beyne, Baron d'Ivryand Saint Andry en la Marche, counsellor and chamberlain to the king,and guard of the provostship of Paris. It was already nearly seventeenyears since he had received from the king, on November 7, 1465, thecomet year,* that fine charge of the provostship of Paris, which wasreputed rather a seigneury than an office. _Dignitas_, says JoannesLoemnoeus, _quae cum non exigua potestate politiam concernente, atqueproerogativis multis et juribus conjuncta est_. A marvellous thing in'82 was a gentleman bearing the king's commission, and whose lettersof institution ran back to the epoch of the marriage of the naturaldaughter of Louis XI. with Monsieur the Bastard of Bourbon.
* This comet against which Pope Calixtus, uncle of Borgia,ordered public prayers, is the same which reappeared in 1835.
The same day on which Robert d'Estouteville took the place of Jacquesde Villiers in the provostship of Paris, Master Jehan Dauvet replacedMessire Helye de Thorrettes in the first presidency of the Court ofParliament, Jehan Jouvenel des Ursins supplanted Pierre de Morvilliersin the office of chancellor of France, Regnault des Dormans oustedPierre Puy from the charge of master of requests in ordinary of theking's household. Now, upon how many heads had the presidency, thechancellorship, the mastership passed since Robert d'Estoutevillehad held the provostship of Paris. It had been "granted to him forsafekeeping," as the letters patent said; and certainly he kept itwell. He had clung to it, he had incorporated himself with it, he hadso identified himself with it that he had escaped that fury for changewhich possessed Louis XI., a tormenting and industrious king, whosepolicy it was to maintain the elasticity of his power by frequentappointments and revocations. More than this; the brave chevalier hadobtained the reversion of the office for his son, and for two yearsalready, the name of the noble man Jacques d'Estouteville, equerry, hadfigured beside his at the head of the register of the salary list of theprovostship of Paris. A rare and notable favor indeed! It is true thatRobert d'Estouteville was a good soldier, that he had loyally raised hispennon against "the league of public good," and that he had presentedto the queen a very marvellous stag in confectionery on the day of herentrance to Paris in 14... Moreover, he possessed the good friendshipof Messire Tristan l'Hermite, provost of the marshals of the king'shousehold. Hence a very sweet and pleasant existence was that of MessireRobert. In the first place, very good wages, to which were attached, andfrom which hung, like extra bunches of grapes on his vine, the revenuesof the civil and criminal registries of the provostship, plus the civiland criminal revenues of the tribunals of Embas of the Chatelet, withoutreckoning some little toll from the bridges of Mantes and of Corbeil,and the profits on the craft of Shagreen-makers of Paris, on the cordersof firewood and the measurers of salt. Add to this the pleasure ofdisplaying himself in rides about the city, and of making his finemilitary costume, which you may still admire sculptured on his tombin the abbey of Valmont in Normandy, and his morion, all embossed atMontlhery, stand out a contrast against the parti-colored red and tawnyrobes of the aldermen and police. And then, was it nothing to wieldabsolute supremacy over the sergeants of the police, the porter andwatch of the Chatelet, the two auditors of the Chatelet, _auditorescastelleti_, the sixteen commissioners of the sixteen quarters, thejailer of the Chatelet, the four enfeoffed sergeants, the hundred andtwenty mounted sergeants, with maces, the chevalier of the watch withhis watch, his sub-watch, his counter-watch and his rear-watch? Was itnothing to exercise high and low justice, the right to interrogate,to hang and to draw, without reckoning petty jurisdiction in the firstresort (_in prima instantia_, as the charters say), on that viscomtyof Paris, so nobly appanaged with seven noble bailiwicks? Can anythingsweeter be imagined than rendering judgments and decisions, as MessireRobert d'Estouteville daily did in the Grand Chatelet, under the largeand flattened arches of Philip Augustus? and going, as he was wont todo every evening, to that charming house situated in the Rue Galilee, inthe enclosure of the royal palace, which he held in right of his wife,Madame Ambroise de Lore, to repose after the fatigue of having sentsome poor wretch to pass the night in "that little cell of the Rue deEscorcherie, which the provosts and aldermen of Paris used to make theirprison; the same being eleven feet long, seven feet and four incheswide, and eleven feet high?"*
* Comptes du domaine, 1383.
And not only had Messire Robert d'Estouteville his special court asprovost and vicomte of Paris; but in addition he had a share, both foreye and tooth, in the grand court of the king. There was no head in theleast elevated which had not passed through his hands before it came tothe headsman. It was he who went to seek M. de Nemours at the BastilleSaint Antoine, in order to conduct him to the Halles; and to conduct tothe Greve M. de Saint-Pol, who clamored and resisted, to the great joyof the provost, who did not love monsieur the constable.
Here, assuredly, is more than sufficient to render a life happy andillustrious, and to deserve some day a notable page in that interestinghistory of the provosts of Paris, where one learns that Oudard deVilleneuve had a house in the Rue des Boucheries, that Guillaumede Hangest purchased the great and the little Savoy, that GuillaumeThiboust gave the nuns of Sainte-Genevieve his houses in the Rue Clopin,that Hugues Aubriot lived in the Hotel du Pore-Epic, and other domesticfacts.
Nevertheless, with so many reasons for taking life patiently andjoyously, Messire Robert d'Estouteville woke up on the morning of theseventh of January, 1482, in a very surly and peevish mood. Whence camethis ill temper? He could not have told himself. Was it because the skywas gray? or was the buckle of his old belt of Montlhery badly fastened,so that it confined his provostal portliness too closely? had he beheldribald fellows, marching in bands of four, beneath his window, andsetting him at defiance, in doublets but no shirts, hats without crowns,with wallet and bottle at their side? Was it a vague presentiment of thethree hundred and seventy livres, sixteen sous, eight farthings, whichthe future King Charles VII. was to cut off from the provostship in thefollowing year? The reader can take his choice; we, for our part, aremuch inclined to believe that he was in a bad humor, simply because hewas in a bad humor.
Moreover, it was the day after a festival, a tiresome day for every one,and above all for the magistrate who is charged with sweeping away allthe filth, properly and figuratively speaking, which a festival dayproduces in Paris. And then he had to hold a sitting at the GrandChatelet. Now, we have noticed that judges in general so arrange mattersthat their day of audience shall also be their day of bad humor, so thatthey may always have some one upon whom to vent it conveniently, in thename of the king, law, and justice.
However, the audience had begun without him. His lieutenants, civil,criminal, and private, were doing his work, according to usage; andfrom eight o'clock in the morning, some scores of bourgeois and_bourgeoises_, heaped and crowded into an obscure corner of the audiencechamber of Embas du Chatelet, between a stout oaken barrier and thewall, had been gazing blissfully at the varied and cheerful spectacle ofcivil and criminal justice dispensed by Master Florian Barbedienne,auditor of the Chatelet, lieutenant of monsieur the provost, in asomewhat confused and utterly haphazard manner.
The hall was small, low, vaulted. A table studded with fleurs-de-lisstood at one end, with a large arm-chair of carved oak, which belongedto the provost and was empty, and a stool on the left for the auditor,Master Florian. Below sat the clerk of the court, scribbling; oppositewas the populace; and in front of the door, and in front of the tablewere many sergeants of the provostship in sleeveless jackets of violetcamlet, with white crosses. Two sergeants of the Parloir-aux-Bourgeois,clothed in their jackets of Toussaint, half red, half blue, wereposted as sentinels before a low, closed door, which was visible atthe extremity of the hall, behind the table. A single pointed window,narrowly encased in the thick wall, illuminated with a pale ray ofJanuary sun two grotesque figures,--the capricious demon of stone carvedas a tail-piece in the keystone of the vaulted ceiling, and
the judgeseated at the end of the hall on the fleurs-de-lis.
Imagine, in fact, at the provost's table, leaning upon his elbowsbetween two bundles of documents of cases, with his foot on the trainof his robe of plain brown cloth, his face buried in his hood of whitelamb's skin, of which his brows seemed to be of a piece, red, crabbed,winking, bearing majestically the load of fat on his cheeks which metunder his chin, Master Florian Barbedienne, auditor of the Chatelet.
Now, the auditor was deaf. A slight defect in an auditor. Master Floriandelivered judgment, none the less, without appeal and very suitably. Itis certainly quite sufficient for a judge to have the air of listening;and the venerable auditor fulfilled this condition, the sole one injustice, all the better because his attention could not be distracted byany noise.
Moreover, he had in the audience, a pitiless censor of his deeds andgestures, in the person of our friend Jehan Frollo du Moulin, thatlittle student of yesterday, that "stroller," whom one was sure ofencountering all over Paris, anywhere except before the rostrums of theprofessors.
"Stay," he said in a low tone to his companion, Robin Poussepain, whowas grinning at his side, while he was making his comments on the sceneswhich were being unfolded before his eyes, "yonder is Jehannetondu Buisson. The beautiful daughter of the lazy dog at theMarche-Neuf!--Upon my soul, he is condemning her, the old rascal! hehas no more eyes than ears. Fifteen sous, four farthings, parisian, forhaving worn two rosaries! 'Tis somewhat dear. _Lex duri carminis_. Who'sthat? Robin Chief-de-Ville, hauberkmaker. For having been passed andreceived master of the said trade! That's his entrance money. He! twogentlemen among these knaves! Aiglet de Soins, Hutin de Mailly Twoequerries, _Corpus Christi_! Ah! they have been playing at dice. Whenshall I see our rector here? A hundred livres parisian, fine to theking! That Barbedienne strikes like a deaf man,--as he is! I'll be mybrother the archdeacon, if that keeps me from gaming; gaming by day,gaming by night, living at play, dying at play, and gaming away my soulafter my shirt. Holy Virgin, what damsels! One after the other my lambs.Ambroise Lecuyere, Isabeau la Paynette, Berarde Gironin! I know themall, by Heavens! A fine! a fine! That's what will teach you to weargilded girdles! ten sous parisis! you coquettes! Oh! the old snout ofa judge! deaf and imbecile! Oh! Florian the dolt! Oh! Barbedienne theblockhead! There he is at the table! He's eating the plaintiff, he'seating the suits, he eats, he chews, he crams, he fills himself. Fines,lost goods, taxes, expenses, loyal charges, salaries, damages, andinterests, gehenna, prison, and jail, and fetters with expenses areChristmas spice cake and marchpanes of Saint-John to him! Look athim, the pig!--Come! Good! Another amorous woman! Thibaud-la-Thibaude,neither more nor less! For having come from the Rue Glatigny! Whatfellow is this? Gieffroy Mabonne, gendarme bearing the crossbow. Hehas cursed the name of the Father. A fine for la Thibaude! A fine forGieffroy! A fine for them both! The deaf old fool! he must have mixed upthe two cases! Ten to one that he makes the wench pay for the oath andthe gendarme for the amour! Attention, Robin Poussepain! What arethey going to bring in? Here are many sergeants! By Jupiter! all thebloodhounds of the pack are there. It must be the great beast of thehunt--a wild boar. And 'tis one, Robin, 'tis one. And a fine one too!_Hercle_! 'tis our prince of yesterday, our Pope of the Fools,our bellringer, our one-eyed man, our hunchback, our grimace! 'TisQuasimodo!"
It was he indeed.
It was Quasimodo, bound, encircled, roped, pinioned, and under goodguard. The squad of policemen who surrounded him was assisted by thechevalier of the watch in person, wearing the arms of France embroideredon his breast, and the arms of the city on his back. There was nothing,however, about Quasimodo, except his deformity, which could justify thedisplay of halberds and arquebuses; he was gloomy, silent, and tranquil.Only now and then did his single eye cast a sly and wrathful glance uponthe bonds with which he was loaded.
He cast the same glance about him, but it was so dull and sleepy thatthe women only pointed him out to each other in derision.
Meanwhile Master Florian, the auditor, turned over attentively thedocument in the complaint entered against Quasimodo, which the clerkhanded him, and, having thus glanced at it, appeared to reflect for amoment. Thanks to this precaution, which he always was careful to takeat the moment when on the point of beginning an examination, he knewbeforehand the names, titles, and misdeeds of the accused, made cutand dried responses to questions foreseen, and succeeded in extricatinghimself from all the windings of the interrogation without allowing hisdeafness to be too apparent. The written charges were to him what thedog is to the blind man. If his deafness did happen to betray himhere and there, by some incoherent apostrophe or some unintelligiblequestion, it passed for profundity with some, and for imbecility withothers. In neither case did the honor of the magistracy sustain anyinjury; for it is far better that a judge should be reputed imbecileor profound than deaf. Hence he took great care to conceal his deafnessfrom the eyes of all, and he generally succeeded so well that he hadreached the point of deluding himself, which is, by the way, easierthan is supposed. All hunchbacks walk with their heads held high, allstutterers harangue, all deaf people speak low. As for him, he believed,at the most, that his ear was a little refractory. It was the soleconcession which he made on this point to public opinion, in his momentsof frankness and examination of his conscience.
Having, then, thoroughly ruminated Quasimodo's affair, he threw backhis head and half closed his eyes, for the sake of more majesty andimpartiality, so that, at that moment, he was both deaf and blind. Adouble condition, without which no judge is perfect. It was in thismagisterial attitude that he began the examination.
"Your name?"
Now this was a case which had not been "provided for by law," where adeaf man should be obliged to question a deaf man.
Quasimodo, whom nothing warned that a question had been addressed tohim, continued to stare intently at the judge, and made no reply. Thejudge, being deaf, and being in no way warned of the deafness of theaccused, thought that the latter had answered, as all accused do ingeneral, and therefore he pursued, with his mechanical and stupidself-possession,--
"Very well. And your age?"
Again Quasimodo made no reply to this question. The judge supposed thatit had been replied to, and continued,--
"Now, your profession?"
Still the same silence. The spectators had begun, meanwhile, to whispertogether, and to exchange glances.
"That will do," went on the imperturbable auditor, when he supposed thatthe accused had finished his third reply. "You are accused before us,_primo_, of nocturnal disturbance; _secundo_, of a dishonorable actof violence upon the person of a foolish woman, _in proejudiciummeretricis; tertio_, of rebellion and disloyalty towards the archersof the police of our lord, the king. Explain yourself upon all thesepoints.---Clerk, have you written down what the prisoner has said thusfar?"
At this unlucky question, a burst of laughter rose from the clerk'stable caught by the audience, so violent, so wild, so contagious, souniversal, that the two deaf men were forced to perceive it. Quasimodoturned round, shrugging his hump with disdain, while Master Florian,equally astonished, and supposing that the laughter of the spectatorshad been provoked by some irreverent reply from the accused, renderedvisible to him by that shrug of the shoulders, apostrophized himindignantly,--
"You have uttered a reply, knave, which deserves the halter. Do you knowto whom you are speaking?"
This sally was not fitted to arrest the explosion of general merriment.It struck all as so whimsical, and so ridiculous, that the wild laughtereven attacked the sergeants of the Parloi-aux-Bourgeois, a sort ofpikemen, whose stupidity was part of their uniform. Quasimodo alonepreserved his seriousness, for the good reason that he understoodnothing of what was going on around him. The judge, more and moreirritated, thought it his duty to continue in the same tone, hopingthereby to strike the accused with a terror which should react upon theaudience, and bring it back to respect.
"So this is as much as to say, perverse and thieving k
nave that you are,that you permit yourself to be lacking in respect towards the Auditorof the Chatelet, to the magistrate committed to the popular policeof Paris, charged with searching out crimes, delinquencies, and evilconduct; with controlling all trades, and interdicting monopoly; withmaintaining the pavements; with debarring the hucksters of chickens,poultry, and water-fowl; of superintending the measuring of fagotsand other sorts of wood; of purging the city of mud, and the air ofcontagious maladies; in a word, with attending continually to publicaffairs, without wages or hope of salary! Do you know that I am calledFlorian Barbedienne, actual lieutenant to monsieur the provost, and,moreover, commissioner, inquisitor, controller, and examiner, with equalpower in provostship, bailiwick, preservation, and inferior court ofjudicature?--"
There is no reason why a deaf man talking to a deaf man should stop.God knows where and when Master Florian would have landed, when thuslaunched at full speed in lofty eloquence, if the low door at theextreme end of the room had not suddenly opened, and given entranceto the provost in person. At his entrance Master Florian did not stopshort, but, making a half-turn on his heels, and aiming at the provostthe harangue with which he had been withering Quasimodo a momentbefore,--
"Monseigneur," said he, "I demand such penalty as you shall deem fittingagainst the prisoner here present, for grave and aggravated offenceagainst the court."
And he seated himself, utterly breathless, wiping away the greatdrops of sweat which fell from his brow and drenched, like tears, theparchments spread out before him. Messire Robert d'Estouteville frownedand made a gesture so imperious and significant to Quasimodo, that thedeaf man in some measure understood it.
The provost addressed him with severity, "What have you done that youhave been brought hither, knave?"
The poor fellow, supposing that the provost was asking his name, brokethe silence which he habitually preserved, and replied, in a harsh andguttural voice, "Quasimodo."
The reply matched the question so little that the wild laugh began tocirculate once more, and Messire Robert exclaimed, red with wrath,--
"Are you mocking me also, you arrant knave?"
"Bellringer of Notre-Dame," replied Quasimodo, supposing that what wasrequired of him was to explain to the judge who he was.
"Bellringer!" interpolated the provost, who had waked up early enough tobe in a sufficiently bad temper, as we have said, not to require to havehis fury inflamed by such strange responses. "Bellringer! I'll play youa chime of rods on your back through the squares of Paris! Do you hear,knave?"
"If it is my age that you wish to know," said Quasimodo, "I think that Ishall be twenty at Saint Martin's day."
This was too much; the provost could no longer restrain himself.
"Ah! you are scoffing at the provostship, wretch! Messieurs thesergeants of the mace, you will take me this knave to the pillory of theGreve, you will flog him, and turn him for an hour. He shall pay me forit, _tete Dieu_! And I order that the present judgment shall be cried,with the assistance of four sworn trumpeters, in the seven castellaniesof the viscomty of Paris."
The clerk set to work incontinently to draw up the account of thesentence.
"_Ventre Dieu_! 'tis well adjudged!" cried the little scholar, JehanFrollo du Moulin, from his corner.
The provost turned and fixed his flashing eyes once more on Quasimodo."I believe the knave said '_Ventre Dieu_' Clerk, add twelve deniersParisian for the oath, and let the vestry of Saint Eustache have thehalf of it; I have a particular devotion for Saint Eustache."
In a few minutes the sentence was drawn up. Its tenor was simple andbrief. The customs of the provostship and the viscomty had not yetbeen worked over by President Thibaut Baillet, and by Roger Barmne, theking's advocate; they had not been obstructed, at that time, by thatlofty hedge of quibbles and procedures, which the two jurisconsultsplanted there at the beginning of the sixteenth century. All was clear,expeditious, explicit. One went straight to the point then, and at theend of every path there was immediately visible, without thickets andwithout turnings; the wheel, the gibbet, or the pillory. One at leastknew whither one was going.
The clerk presented the sentence to the provost, who affixed his seal toit, and departed to pursue his round of the audience hall, in a frameof mind which seemed destined to fill all the jails in Paris that day.Jehan Frollo and Robin Poussepain laughed in their sleeves. Quasimodogazed on the whole with an indifferent and astonished air.
However, at the moment when Master Florian Barbedienne was reading thesentence in his turn, before signing it, the clerk felt himself movedwith pity for the poor wretch of a prisoner, and, in the hope ofobtaining some mitigation of the penalty, he approached as near theauditor's ear as possible, and said, pointing to Quasimodo, "That man isdeaf."
He hoped that this community of infirmity would awaken Master Florian'sinterest in behalf of the condemned man. But, in the first place, wehave already observed that Master Florian did not care to have hisdeafness noticed. In the next place, he was so hard of hearing That hedid not catch a single word of what the clerk said to him; nevertheless,he wished to have the appearance of hearing, and replied, "Ah! ah! thatis different; I did not know that. An hour more of the pillory, in thatcase."
And he signed the sentence thus modified.
"'Tis well done," said Robin Poussepain, who cherished a grudge againstQuasimodo. "That will teach him to handle people roughly."
CHAPTER II. THE RAT-HOLE.